North Ridgeville teacher gathers pop tabs to help children in need

MORNING JOURNAL/SAM GREENEA box of pop tabs in the classroom of Diane Ricci at Lear North Elementary School in North Ridgeville, Ohio, on Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013. Ricci collects the tabs every school year and has already collected more than 400,000 tabs toward her goal of 1,000,000 by the end of the school year to be donated to the Ronald McDonald House.

MORNING JOURNAL/SAM GREENEA box of pop tabs in the classroom of Diane Ricci at Lear North Elementary School in North Ridgeville, Ohio, on Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013. Ricci collects the tabs every school year and has already collected more than 400,000 tabs toward her goal of 1,000,000 by the end of the school year to be donated to the Ronald McDonald House.

NORTH RIDGEVILLE -- On the first day of school every year, Diane Ricci, a first-grade teacher at Lear North Elementary School in North Ridgeville, starts collecting pop tabs.

By the end of this school year, she hopes to have a million of them; literally, one million pop tabs.

Ricci and her husband, Ron, will then take the pop tabs to the Ronald McDonald House in Cleveland, where the tabs are turned in for cash that is used by Ronald McDonald House to purchase entertainment for the young patients undergoing cancer treatment as well as any life-threatening disease and their families.

"They use the tabs to buy patients and their family members things like tickets to a baseball game or they hold a movie night for them, things like that," Ricci said.

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It all began 12 years ago when their grandson, Brenden Stull was 22 months old and in Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland, where he was undergoing treatment for a brain tumor.

"The chemo did not work. It didn't get all of it (tumor). Only the radiation worked. But he had to get there by 4 in the morning every day because the radiation treatment was only available in the morning," Ricci said.

During that time, Brenden and his mother, Tami Hill, of Elyria, stayed at the Ronald McDonald House. Ricci and her husband would drive there every day to see Brenden.

While they were there, Ricci said, "We saw pop tabs lying around. They said they were collecting them and they told us what they were used for. My grandson is now a happy, healthy eighth grader. So, it seems like something I can do now, to help the other kids and put a smile on their faces," she said.

One year, Ricci collected 898,000 pop tabs.

"It just happened that people were very generous that year," she said. "It varies. We got bunches some years. Some years, it dwindled. Two years ago, I don't know what happened. This time, we're six weeks ahead of last year."

So far, Ricci has amassed a total of 400,000 pop tabs. She keeps her current cache of pop tabs in 15 boxes, the kind of box that copy paper comes in. The boxes are stored under a semicircular table in her classroom.

By the time she has reached her goal, Ricci estimates she will have a total of 35 to 40 boxes full of pop tabs.

The pop tabs come from family members, friends and even students.

"We have three daughters. They all save pop tabs. All the relatives save them for us. One little boy in my class said he went with his parents to Pinewood Derby. They had snacks and things. When they were done, he told his parents, 'Hey, don't throw them (pop tabs) out. After that, they collected pop tabs," Ricci said.

"Another one of my students said, 'My mom is at Rotary telling the other members to save their pop tabs.' So, word is getting around."

After 30 years as an educator, nine of them teaching at Lear North Elementary,5580 Lear Nagle Road, Ricci plans to make this year her last as a teacher.

"I will quit at the end of the school year. It's my last year and I want to go out with a bang." Which means she wants to enlist the help of everyone to attain her one million pop tabs goal.

Ricci said pop tabs can be dropped off at the school with directions that they be given to her.

Probably the single most popular question Ricci is asked, is how do you count them?